The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine extends its strongest support and solidarity to the indigenous resistance at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the settler colonial project of genocide and plunder in North America.

“It is no surprise that the United States and Canada, built on the genocide of indigenous peoples and the plunder of their land and resources, are today the strongest settler colonial partners of the Zionist state engaged in its own settler colonial project of destruction in Palestine,” said Palestinian leftist writer Khaled Barakat in an interview with the PFLP media office.

“The indigenous strugglers at Standing Rock are defending indigenous land and water, the resources that have been confiscated and polluted for centuries by a settler colonial capitalist project that has ravaged indigenous lives, land and resources. They are defending the very existence of their people with their valiant resistance. As a Palestinian national liberation movement, we salute these indigenous strugglers and all who stand alongside them at Standing Rock confronting the militarized forces of the settler colonial state and their privatized agents,” said Barakat.

“It is also no surprise that G4S has been involved in providing private security for the construction of the destructive, invasive pipeline through indigenous land, threatening the water and the safety of the Standing Rock Sioux and the rights of indigenous nations. This same corporation is involved in providing security to the Canadian mining corporations that plunder indigenous land for mineral wealth around the world and destroy indigenous land for the so-called ‘tar sands’ that threaten the future of the land itself. It is the same corporation that sells equipment and security services to the Israel Prison Services that imprison over 7,000 Palestinians in the service of the Zionist settler colonial project, and the same company involved in the mass incarceration of children and youth – especially youth of color – in the US, and in the deportation of migrants in the UK, Australia, US and elsewhere,” said Barakat.

“The hundreds of indigenous nations – including Palestinian participants – coming together in Standing Rock exemplify an unceasing history of hundreds of years of resistance in the face of a genocidal project,” said Barakat. “Today’s U.S. empire that bombs and threatens the lives of people around the world, especially in the Arab world, Asia, Africa and Latin America, was built on settler colonialism, the genocide of indigenous people, and the enslavement and genocide aganst Black people. Throughout its history, it has been confronted by fierce resistance.”

In the face of settler colonial genocide and destruction, the land and water defenders at Standing Rock are defending all of us. We see them reflected in the Palestinian mothers holding tight to their olive trees targeted for settler destruction; in the Palestinian farmers who resist in the so-called “buffer zones,” and the fishers who brave warship fire to preserve Palestinian fishery, in the land and water defenders of the world who resist the vicious onslaughts of settler colonial capitalism. The PFLP salutes these land and water defenders on the front line for all of our struggles around the world.

“There have been hundreds of arrests, the use of massive military equipment and the force of the state in order to enforce the Dakota Access Pipeline through sacred burial grounds and attempt to force indigenous land and water defenders from their land. The use of mass arrests and incarceration as a mechanism to confiscate land and resources and suppress liberation movements is of course not surprising. It is a technique that we see used in Palestine, keeping thousands of Palestinian political prisoners behind bars for struggling for the freedom of their people and their land,” said Barakat. “In fact, many aspects of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine were developed in light of the colonial techniques used in the US and Canada.”

The PFLP extends its revolutionary greetings and salutes to all of the Native and indigenous peoples defending their land and water, affirming their existence and resistance over centuries of struggle. We express our strongest solidarity with Native and indigenous struggles for self-determination and liberation. We encourage all Palestinians, especially the Palestinian community in the United States, to continue to develop and build upon the efforts of Palestinian youth in support, solidarity and participation in the Standing Rock camps of struggle, and in developing long-term, sustainable, mutual joint struggle and solidarity with Native liberation movements.

We also encourage and call upon the Palestine solidarity movement to build upon the caravans to Standing Rock and cross-country actions and protests to deepen its involvement in the struggle to defend indigenous land, and note in particular the protests in New York and elsewhere linking the struggle of Palestinian prisoners and the call to boycott G4S with the defense of Standing Rock against arrests, attacks and privatized and state repressive power. It is necessary to thoroughly confront US imperialism and settler colonialism as part and parcel of standing with the struggle of the Palestinian people for liberation and return. There is a long history of connections and common struggle between our liberation struggles, together in the global movement to defeat settler colonialism, Zionism and imperialism, that we must nurture and build upon until victory and liberation.